THE REVOLUTION IS BEING TELEVISED

by Alex Stolis

after Gil Scott-Heron

You cannot escape it by staying home 

the revolution is alive

the revolution is a nuclear sun melting black ice

the revolution will not let you rest.

There are no news highlights

there is no news, only revolution,

no memes, no theme song, no uniforms,

no military-industrial complexion.

The revolution is being televised

in B&W

in Technicolor

in IMAX 3D.

The revolution is being televised as you read this

the revolution does not care about talking heads,

doesn’t believe in DHS or FBI or ATF or 

any other alphabet-despotic soup.

The revolution is being televised

while you eat, sleep, make love, 

while you want to believe things are normal,

ignore the revolution at your own peril.

The revolution is being televised

coast to coast, station to station

a commercial free telethon streaming 24/7

it is Bot-proof, cleared of influencers.

This revolution takes no prisoners

it names names & kicks ass, it spins 

spin back to truth, it’s a Springsteen song 

written & recorded in 48 hours.

There will be no taping or film at 11:00

no reruns,

tune in or turn out

the revolution is being televised.

There will be no ctrl-alt-delete

lock screen, reboot

this revolution is being televised

is being televised live.

Author’s note: Last week, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song in protest of the ICE actions in my hometown, Minneapolis. It brought to mind Public Enemy's song "Revolution" which brought to mind Gil Scott-Heron's song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" which, in turn, brought this poem to me. I am reminded of how art is connected, the power of words and how we, the people, do have the power to direct history.

Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections, Pop. 1280 and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife was released by Louisiana Literature Press, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres in by Bottlecap Press. He lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.

WO IST MUTTER

by Jon Wesick

In the final days of the Third Reich, Magda Goebbels poisoned her six children. The Goebbels family in 1942: (back row) Hildegard, Harald Quandt, Helga; (front row) Helmut, Hedwig, Magda, Heidrun, Joseph and Holdine.

 —Wikipedia

 

Two girls, blonde hair, blue ribbons, bare feet caked with dirt. 

Their nightgowns smell of diesel, breath tastes of bitter almond. 

“I want momma!” Little Heide says.

“She’ll put us back in that basement.” Helga drags her sister 

past masked men deporting former allies to the Taliban.

 

“Have you seen my Helga, meine Heide?” 

Magda staples a poster to an almond tree.

FBI agents in blue jackets don’t reply. 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

“I want cake. I want Blondi,” Heide says. “I want Hilde and Helmut 

and Holde and Hedda. I want to sing the Leader a song.”

Show trials, lawsuits, rubber stamps in judges’ robes, 

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

After an anti-anti-fascist salute at the inauguration,

billionaires bankrupt the sick, starve the poor.

Magda joins the president in the Horst Wessel song.

Ay! von mir, Wehklagende, Wehklagende

Wehkalagende, in himmelblau 

Green fruit, pink blossoms, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Tanks in D.C., Predator drones over Portland, Gaza on Beale Street, 

iron lungs, broken test tubes, enemies within,  

“Why is your neck bruised?” Heide asks. 

Serrated leaves, green fruit, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

 

Partisans burn their rifles, mail excuses with requests for donations. 

“Hush, children.” Magda feeds her daughters poppies and marzipan.

Pink blossoms, serrated leaves, smell of diesel, taste of bitter almond

Hundreds of Jon Wesick's poems and stories have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic. His latest book, Reductio Ad Absurdum, is a collection of parodies. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction.

ELEVEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN INAUGURATION

by Roberto Christiano

"I am out with lanters (sic) looking for myself."    

—Emily Dickinson

 

I am awake. I am a foreigner. Illegal. I am my 
parents. I know that I am not illegal. I feel that I 
am. I am scared.

My father was illegal. If you were stuck in 
poverty with Hitler’s trains running through you 
and countries crumbling before you, you’d be 
illegal too.

Musk gives the Hitler salute. Or is it the Roman 
salute? You know, the one you do to Mussolini.

My mother’s row house in the Italian section of 
D.C. was searched by the FBI for possible 
connections to Mussolini. Every Italian house 
was.

Male and female. Since when was that an easy 
divide?

Melania hides her face under a boater hat just as 
America hides her soul under a bushel.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

It snowed here. I can’t shovel. Uncontrolled high 
blood pressure. A man and his brother shoveled 
for me. Carlos and Zé. They won’t be here 
tomorrow.

I worked at the Library of Congress for twenty 
years. Our guards are the same as the Capitol 

guards. On January 6^th our guard was killed.
There are no degrees of separation. Separation is 
an illusion.

I am scared. I feel that I am. I know that I am not 
illegal. I am my parents. Illegal. I am a foreigner. 

I am awake.

Author’s note: Father married Mother and became a U.S. citizen. Mother was already a citizen.

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poem, Why I Sang at Dinner, in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His full legnth collection, Port of Leaving, is published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.

ASSANGED

by Lisa Seidenberg

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has signed an order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (above) to the United States, where he faces espionage charges, in a decision his organization said marked a "dark day for press freedom." —CNN, June 17, 2022

For publishing classified documents

Of military strikes on innocents

Hits on civilians and wartime blunders

In Iraq and Afghanistan, in shocking numbers

It was not a surprise they took him down

Debating if he is journalist

Assange was a one man wanted list

Sheltered for years in the Embassy of Equador

Until they booted him out the door

His mental state, on view, alarming

But, even so, could still be quite charming

Befriended Pamela Lee, a Hollywood alum

Then fathered two babies and married their mum

While passing the hours awaiting a decision

By London magistrates on his extradition

Why does one choose a life so perilous

When most of us risk so much less?

Or did Julian not know what fate would hold

For one who opted to be so bold

To defy the FBI 

And the CIA

To imagine they would look the other way?

In a more principled world - but not today.

Present day martyrs like Assange and Navalny

Join those in history who took a stand

And paid a high price with stern reprimand

For the crime of speaking truth to power 

And not run away—or cower

I would not do so but let us pause to admire

Those who step out of line and into the fire.

Lisa Seidenberg is a writer and filmmaker residing in Connecticut. Twitter: @Leeside33

SOUND AND FURY FROM UVALDE

by Suzette Bishop

I hear it from a two hours’ drive north,

From just below the scenic Texas Hill Country,

The scream of first getting the news

Their loved one was gunned down

Merged into one long, piercing, repeating sound,

Before a storm barrels southward,

Hail starting up slowly,

Then shaking the cathedral ceiling,

Our windows,

Animals running for cover.

We’ve driven through the small town,

Stopped to get gas,

Know a couple people who went to the junior college

On barrel racing scholarships,

Heard the grandson of someone from work survived.

A heart-stopped moment in class once

With the popping sound down the hall,

Two students, a veteran and FBI agent, meeting my eyes,

The veteran immediately slamming the door shut.

He always sat next to the door,

One leg jiggling, ready to escape.

Do you know what to do if there’s a shooter?

The agent asked me, asked the class.

Everybody nodded. 

The lectern and desks our only hope

Of keeping that door closed since there is no lock,

And I’m not given the key,

I am forced to tell them.

That time, it was just some backfiring or mechanical sound,

And we got back to what we were supposed to be doing,

Our hearts re-starting,

Still, I see us rocking the lectern from its moorings,

Pulling up the tape covering the wires to the computer,

Pushing and dragging it to the door,

The wires sparking, desks piled around it,

Some of us smashing desks into windows.

In one scenario, we get this done before

The shooter appears at our classroom on the second floor,

In some scenarios, the students jump two stories down,

Breaking bones, cut by glass, but alive,

In another scenario, the shooter enters at our end of the building

And sprints up the stairs, bypassing the first floor;

The veteran, some of his classmates

Sitting near him, try to keep the shooter out

By leaning hard against the door, but can’t,

The agent pulls out his concealed gun and shoots most times.

In many scenarios, the lectern is too heavy,

Too stuck, to move,

The desks too flimsy and small,

Their tabletop hinges squeaking loudly,

Drawing attend, wasting precious time.

In a few scenarios, the shooter is one of my students,

Already in the classroom,

Like the one who lovingly wrote poems about his gun,

The one having a meltdown and yelling at me

During the final,

Another ranting so loudly, another instructor looked in on us,

The one writing about hurting a classmate,

The one who mailed me a threatening letter,

Whoever left a knife at the lectern.

With the sound of hail ringing like deadbolt locks,

I use the knife to cut the wires.

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook Jaguar’s Book of the Dead. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. In addition to teaching, she has given workshops for gifted children, senior citizens, writers on the US-Mexico border, at-risk youth, and for an afterschool arts program serving a rural Hispanic community. She lives with her husband and two cats.

INCANTATION: LET THE MAGIC BEGIN

by Mare Leonard

art by Noely Ryan @ ArtStation

You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. I can grab your pussy, stick out my tongue, spit, sputter like geysers from below.

Into what hell of fake news,  ruse of tax cuts,  mountains of lies, the lawyer in the room guise  stirs the cauldron  today? Don't lean on hopes of Flynt. He scratched a rock, lit a light of immunity for morality or him? Like a geyser, he may spark, sputter, reach to the sky and fizzle. The devil resides in the cauldron below. Deep under the caw caw of the crow, geysers spout up and we shout this is it, the one, howl, don't let babies burn  burn, burn, don't let lifelines fall through the cracks, don't give  billions to the rich. don't mock the middle, the poor, the immigrant. Drown out congressmen in LaLaLand who like Marie Antoinette shout, Let them eat cake. Geese honkhonk, Resist. How does the GOPP, the party of the pedophiles exist, how do they move and eat and sleep? Hooked on opiods, burgers, midnight tweets, a belief in trickle down economics, the lie that sweeps the donors cash for their ten thou dinner treats, another castle on a hill?  We observe, take photos when the earth splits, sweeps you all below. We sing, you can run you but you can't hide, you can shout  but Mueller and the FBI will  crack you GingerBreadMan and your vanilla wafer friends. You'll tremble and crumble, rollrollroll into the underland.  And in the heavens  the #MeToo will light the sky.  We'll sing, love, love, love, hug women, men, babies, The LGBTQ, DACA, Muslims all who  rise from the dead to hear from above no one can  pardon the King of Scam.

Mare Leonard lives in an old school house overlooking The Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.  Although her most natural writing voice is humorous she has published in a range of voices and in all forms and subject matters. She was a finalist in last year's NY State Di Biase contest. Some of her latest publications appear in the Vietnam poetry publication from Perfume River, Rats Ass Review, Figroot, Sweet Tree, Eunoia and in the British Journal of Arts&Letters.

COVFEFE

by Jonel Abellanosa

Image source: Joey Mancuso

If you want to wag the dog, covfefe!
If you want people to take their eyes
            off your hands, covfefe!
If you want to distract the FBI, covfefe!
If you want to distract the media, covfefe!
If you want to calm yourself, covfefe!
If you want anger management, covfefe!
If you want to enrich yourself from
            the environment’s degradation
            without people noticing, covfefe!
If you are just simply dumb, covfefe!
If you are faker than the news you peddle,
            covfefe!
If you are corrupt as hell, covfefe!

If you want to covfefe the planet, enjoy!
If you want to covfefe NATO, enjoy!
If you want to covfefe yourself,
            don’t bring the rest of us
                        with you!
Just covfefe yourself !

We don’t give a covfefe!

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Marsh Hawk Review, Anglican Theological Review, Star*Line,  Poetry Kanto, Spirit Fire Review, Carbon Culture Review, The McNeese Review, GNU Journal and Dark Matter Literary Journal.  He has two chapbooks, Pictures of the Floating World (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and The Freeflowing All (Black Poppy Review).  He is a Pushcart Prize and Dwarf Stars Award nominee.

UNREALITY TV

by Melissa Balmain

TV Guide: July 8, 1967 - Efrem Zimbalist Jr. of "The FBI" and J. Edgar Hoover of The FBI

"Comey green lights TV series to boost FBI's image"

—The Hill, April 13, 2017

James crowed, "The way to raise our cred's
to show us working smart—
an altruistic team of Feds
with public needs at heart!
They'll see I'm not some fickle nut
Or floundering buffoon!"
"Okay," said the producers, "but
why jump the shark so soon?"

Melissa Balmain is Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poems have appeared in such places as American Arts Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, Lighten Up Online, and Poetry Daily; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and Success. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award) is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

TO: THE VOTING PUBLIC; FROM: THE FBI

by Melissa Balmain

In case you're wondering what motivated
the bomb we dropped and, yesterday, defused:
We're well aware our job is to be hated,
and yours, of course, is simply to feel used.

Melissa Balmain is Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poems have appeared in such places as American Arts Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, Lighten Up Online, and Poetry Daily; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award), is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

A MURDER MOST FOUL

by Christina Pacosz




Jimmy they're digging up the earth again
to find you,  a Valentine's Day baby
from the Hoosier state.
An old farm of disturbed earth. Not even a barn remains.
I am crying at the news.  Startled by my tears.  So much went down with you.
July 30, 1975.  Nixon, for chrissakes, pardoned you.  You did your time.
Your  children mourn you still.  Your daughter, the retired Missouri judge,
says she is grateful to the FBI for trying to find you.
A bone fragment, a bit of hair. Something.  You were a man others turned to.
You understood the word solidarity as something in your bones. Your blood. They could kill you
but not that.   The Oakland County sheriff calls your disappearance an open wound for Detroit.
You made the Teamsters the biggest union ever and used your clout until they took you out.
You.  Hoffa.  Your son still runs the union.
This isn't pop history but a midden heap, a litany of woes you tried to fix
so what if you wanted to get yours?


Born and raised in Detroit by working-class Polish-American parents, Christina Pacosz’  poetry/writing has appeared in literary magazines and online journals for almost  half a century. A poet-in-the-schools and a North Carolina Visiting Artist, she has published several books of poetry, including Greatest Hits, 1975-2001, Pudding House, 2002, a by-invitation-only series.  Her chapbook, Notes from the Red Zone, originally published by Seal Press in 1983, was selected as the inaugural winner of the ReBound Series by Seven Kitchens Press in 2009.

THE WIRETAPPERS BALL

by Deborah Gang

An FBI internet surveillance unit will collaborate with the coming NSA data center in Utah to decipher and monitor email between private citizens. Homeland Security recently began to monitor social media using version 2.1.3 key words & search terms.*

Some are obvious. Do not use assassination, 

Taliban, bomb, bomb squad, bomb threat.

Al Qaeda (all spellings). But electric? Blackout. 

Metro. Power. Smart? Is it worth the risk to say

failure? Dock. Airport. Airplane and its derivatives. 

Cancelled. Delays. Flood. Snow. Blizzard.

Why, these are some of your necessary words--

everyone’s necessary words. If you suffer blizzards

you need to talk about them and if you don’t, you

need to gloat. Wildfire. Ice. Stranded. Stuck.

Temblor. All suspect. Use sleet at your own risk 

along with plague. Plume. Enriched. Collapse. 

They have marked the best words as hazardous. 

Including hazardous. Breach. Mudslide. Grid. San Diego!

Say goodbye to relief and closure. And cyber terror.

Cyber terror is not to be used.         Warning

is on the list. 



*Sources: 

• "The Department of Homeland Security Is Searching Your Facebook and Twitter for These Words" by Joel Johnson, Animal New York, February 27, 2012.
• "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)" by James Bamford Wired, March 15, 2012.
• "Avoid these words to prevent Homeland Security from spying on your social networks"
  --Technology News Blog by Tecca, Today in Tech, Yahoo! News, May 29, 2012.
• "U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens" by Julia Angwin, The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2012.

Originally from Washington D.C., Deborah Gang moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan to attend graduate school and remained there, both for her work as a psychotherapist and the proximity to Lake Michigan. Her research has been published in Education and Treatment of Children and her prose and poems in Literary Mama, Encore, The Michigan Poet and J Journal (CUNY).